Twilight Sparkle: Alright. For this first fork, we’re going up the steep path instead of the long way around.
DM: Got it. <scribble>
Rarity: Our first encounter with a real, full-sized dragon! They build their nests with their treasure hoards, you know. If we play our cards right, we might come out of this with some new loot!
(beat)
Rarity: B-But… of course, I’m the Element of Generosity. Acquiring a few… rare gemstones is… beneath me.
Twilight Sparkle: And stealing is a good way to get it mad. So don’t do that.
Pinkie Pie: What if I threw it a party? Would that make it less mad?
Applejack: Could we NOT trip over ourselves when we get up there? Just sayin’.
Is another player about to do something you think is horribly stupid, despite your protests? Shout "I tackle you!" and roll a strength-based check to physically restrain them. That'll get your point across.
WARNING: As soon as you start doing this, every decision your party makes will play out like a game of American football.
And before I forget, be sure to check out the artist ThousandYearSunrise, who created the signature-style banner for FiD as well as a brand new avatar image for the Comic Profile page. That, along with the Father's Day image, rounds up all the art I got in the past week.
Ponies for the Pony God! Friendship for the Friendship Throne! And I had a situation like that, Ranubis had taken over as DM for the night, and I was playing Davven, and the pixie started mouthing off to the giant so I turned and said "I'm going to roll to restrain him" it worked, and I put a gag over the Pixies mouth and everything was fine.
Or how about the time the entire rest of the party had to hold back the Minotaur after our rich quest giver gave us a single freaking healing potion to the party as an advance? That could have gotten ugly really quickly.
Also the statue incident, the Cursed Crown, your attempt to remove Davven from the mission (was going to have him vanish into a hole but the party decided to tie a rope to him). We generate a lot of these don't we.
You always have the bestest icons! Who/what/where-from is this one? And where did you get the utterly delightful anthropomorphized Pinkie you were using previously?
@darkwulf23: I have a Photobucket account, but it's pretty varied in terms of content, quality and in-joke level, so I tend not to link to it. I have a tumblr blog, though! You can find a link to it on the Fanart page. Though it doesn't host much, if any, humanisation art from me.
@DB: Both of the icons are Pinkie Pie. This one would be the anti-Pinkie from Party of One. My eyes can't open nearly this wide. XD
Unfortunatly I tend to play Mages/Theives. The Party bricks would just look at me funny as I crashed into their near-inpentratable armors and bust myself up.
Then they'd shug and do whatever they were going to do anyway.
Nah - always keep a spare cast of Fireball aside for just these kind of situations.
There's a webcomic that gets posted on DnD's article archive where the orcish character says "New meat remember: axe always have right-of-way." I'd like to think that more aptly applies to Fireball...
Course, there's always the traditional invisible + tie shoes together trick for lack of strength.
I once had to kill a fellow PC, or technically order an NPC to do so, after he murdered another PC and was about to go on a town destroying rampage. Everyone, including the rampaging character's player, agreed I had done the right thing.
I had one campaign where the guy's alignment was chaotic neutral (chaotic stupid). Well when he and my character were walking in town alone he killed a random NPC in the middle of the street justifying that is within his alignment as long as he can save a guy later. In game the guards were called to arrest the guy and I knew that they would arrest me too because in everybody's eyes, I was involved. So I drew my sword and made a citizen's arrest right there. Guy left the game right after because the rest of the group agreed that what I did was appropriate.
My group's first Pathfinder campaign (only the DM and one player had ever played before) quickly developed the order of "Paladin, sit on the Magus!" after said Magus had nearly burned down a campsite...aggro'd some fey guardian a cocoon we'd told him not to touch...
So is Rarity reminding herself that she has different standards now that she's an Unaligned Element of Generosity, or is she just using it as a cover for her real intentions?
RY: Well, I certainly feel generous donating a quarter of my share of treasure to the local orphanage.
TS: We stole all that money from the dragon. And somehow your share was bigger than ours.
RY: Law of Robin Hood, darling: You have to take before you can give.
I think it's more her trying to mentally balance her roleplaying grandeur against her insatiable loot-lust: Her roleplaying self versus her surpressed loot-crazed self
"Look, I tithe."
"Of the 1000 platinum coins you got, you only gave one hundered!"
"...tithe means 1/10th you know."
Yeah, 1/10th is a good ratio for donations from treasure.
Rarity:( What has gotten into me? I'm playing an element of honesty! I couldn't possibly try to steal that dragon's hoard... Could I? )
*Mini Princess Platinum poofs on left shoulder*
Greedity: That dragon's hoard certainly sounds divine... Gemstones, piles of gold, fashionable jewelry... It would only take a fraction of it to make you the cream de la cream!
Rarity: ( Hmmm... I could use those gems to boost my business... And it would be lovely to have a bag of holding to call my own... )
*Mini Element of generosity Rarity poofs on right shoulder*
Roleplayity: I can't believe this! You are the element of generosity! To succumb to petty greed and endanger our friends with this foolishness is what a lesser roleplayer would do! Besides, the DM is bound to give you a massive exp boost in the end!
Rarity: Of course! Whatever was I thinking! I'm... generous... now! Why, if I were to switch alignments every session, I'd be a charlatan!
Greedity: Darling... You are a charlatan.
Rarity: ( Shut up! )
Campaigns need more shoulder angels/devils. If for nothing else either the conversation of "dude, who are you talking to?" or "dude, why the hell do you have a cherub and an imp on your shoulder? I thought your character sheet said you have no familiars."
Actually even funnier. Every time one of the party members have a moral dilemma have your book imp familiar jump up on his shoulder.
Book Imp on the paladin. "Of course it is right to let the innocent one hang. He was convicted by a just court, and if everybody finds out that they condemn the wrong person then people will loose faith in their court system and society will collapse. It is better to let one innocent die than to let a thousand guilty go free. We are talking about the greater good here."
Paladin: "Mordred, get your damn familiar off of my shoulder before I holy smite his ass and yours!"
Barbarian
Imp: Smash! Loot! Pillage!
Angel: Kill bad guys, get wenches and loot!
*Kills both*
Barb: Kill angel and imp, get exp.
Psionic
Imp: Mind control them all!
Angel: No! Mind control them all, and make them all do good deeds!
Psion: Become a psion they said... No side effects, they said...
Paladin
Imp: Kill the OH SH-*Smite evil'd*
Angel: I love this job.
Thiefling
Imp: Kill the- Heeeey Charlie! Remember me?
Tiefling: Zilbit! I see they promoted you to conscience devil! How's the wife and kids?
Angel: Do you guys mind cutting the chat? I'm not getting paid on the hour here you know!
I remember a good "Gotcha" I did to one of my players. He worshipped the goddess of rogues and in one lucrative adventure he met her. Her last line before she left the party was directed to that specific player:
Goddess: "BTW, don't forget my 10% next time you cash out."
Player: "...Wait, how do I know you're really a goddess and not a con artist pretending to be her?"
Goddess: "If I didn't leave you asking questions like that, I wouldn't be the goddess of rogues, would I?"
He promptly donated 10% to the nearest "Rogue guild" that worshipped this goddess. :D
I once DM'ed a session with one veteran player and a whole bunch of newbies. The vet quickly decided that the only way to get them to act with a degree of anything resembling sanity was to tackle them whenver they thought of doing stupid things.
Unfortunately, he played the support wizard role and the stupidest new player was the tankiest tank that had ever tanked. So I had a lot of fun watching those two.
In my D&D campaign, the phrase "I roll a Strength check to slap some sense into [character]" has been uttered approximately once every two sessions. Usually, [character] is the sole Chaotic Evil member (everyone else is Neutral Good or Lawful Good), however, there have been others.
I believe that manouver is called the "Dope Slap".
That should be made into an actual attack, to be honest.
Common sense strike When an ally adjecent to you fails an intelligence or wisdom roll, you may roll your strength, wisdom or intelligence modifier (whichever is highest) against the ally's value used for the roll. If successful, you negate any negative effects and allow yourself or the ally to try again.
American Football? Feh, I wish it were that gentle. My group breaks out into a Hockey tournament, complete with arguments, brushing the referee off, and blood (for the characters, not the players).
Just so we're clear. :3
Anyway, I see such acts of stopping the one crazy player to generally run against the concept of "Darwinism" as I run it. I do make the game dangerous sure, but few players realize that the only PCs that have died in my games are dead because of their own actions/choices. And never had I let one player's chaotic actions directly lead to the death of the party.
I can only think that my ability to make the situation seem dangerous works too well.
In one Pathfinder game I'm in, one character is a Chaotic Stupid Magus (magic swordsman), and my Witch has ended up (much to her surprise) as the group's moral compass and Token Sane Person. Considering how often she needs to drag the magus off by one ear, I keep joking I should get Improved Grapple.
I remember a while ago, we were in a campaign where our DM was sort of railroading us into doing something that would be ultimately totally safe, but in character was beyond stupid. We found a half-completed demonic ritual (complete with pools of blood on the floor dripping UPWARD), with alcoves the perfect shape and size to fit some evil enchanted candlesticks into them. After some Arcana checks, we determined that placing the candles there would complete the ritual, and open the door in the floor in the middle of it all. My character had one candle, and was easily dumb enough to think this was a good idea. My sister's character, an Int-based Warlord (or maybe Wis, can't recall. Either way, a smart cookie), had the other candle, and since her character was highly religious and NOT a moron, refused to actively complete a demonic ritual for any reason.
My character immediately rolled an unarmed attack doing non-lethal damage in an attempt to knock her's out. Granted, even my character would probably be able to scrounge up their one scrap of common sense for the day and realize it's not a good idea, BUT out-of-game, it was readily apparent that there was no way we were going to make the slightest progress if we sat there bickering in-character over the morality of completing a demonic ritual if it was the only means of escaping our current location.
Had I known that going for the direct approach would've resulted in an even BIGGER argument, I would've just said out of character "look, we're obviously not getting anywhere in a hurry by NOT doing this, so do it."
Just goes to show ya'll, poor DMing strains even blood relationships. =P
At one point, our party was infiltrating a stronghold to find out where the source of a series of attacks was. Well, we blundered into the chamber of a silver dragon who was not pleased but politely wanted to know what we were doing spying on her.
Our dwarven fighter: "We're not spies, we're just gathering information."
We only survived through GM leniency and one of the mages deciding to sacrifice herself so the dragon would choke to death on a giant porcupine.
He insists to this day it was in character, but every time we had any kind of NPC interaction after that somebody would preemptively gag the dwarf.
I've never used a strength check to keep someone from making a dumb decision. The closest I've come to that was in a game of Eclipse Phase, where I'd gotten the unstable half of the party addicted to a recreational drug my morph secreted. Going against my decisions would mean cutting them off, and due to my alien biology this wasn't a brand you could pick up at any local black market (Actually, I WAS the supplier for the local black market).
For the other half of the party, I just had to remind them that I had the dangerous party members under my thumb, and wasn't afraid to use them.
Nope, not restraining. When I DM, I just tend to let any nonlethal consequences happen realistically.
As in, when a party member stays behind for whatever reason to cut the top off of an emptied treasure chest, I start the next room's combat without him.
I once did a Puzzle based Mini campaign When the goal was simply to escape this room, with infinite lives, though with a minor penalty to revive.
In one room there was a Dragon statue which came alive if he or his treasure hoard was touched. He wanted something valuable, and would kill us if we didn't get it. The thing is, we didn't know what he wanted, though most of us guessed it would be a gem of some kind due to his hoard. One party member didn't quite get this, and kept awakening the dragon whenever we collected anything remotely valuable, killing us all. (We were unarmed for this campaign, to stop us from just brute forcing the way though the puzzles)
When we finally started making progress, we managed to get this magic ring. It was obvious what it had to be used for, but that party member decided that it was what the Dragon wanted (it wasn't) and went to touch the dragon. Cue the entire party Tackling him to the ground with loud cries of NO!
Goats will climb your car, then your house. A goat will climb a fifty foot perfectly vertical oak tree if you let it! And the one I met busted me in the knee. Everything turned out just fine in the end, though, it grew back, and I learned that goat kebabs are delicious!
Purely for my own satisfaction, I was in the habit of giving Psionic wedgies and slaps to the royal idiot of a Paladin. Didn't do much, but it got the point across.
My group once helped to blow up the entire universe just because my character didn't take the time to explain why we were gathering these random artifacts, and no other character thought to ask.
It was all in good spirits, though. We (out of game) did it for the lulz.
In the D&D group I'm part of, we have one player who ALWAYS makes characters with a murder all the NPCs he can attitude. I cannot count the number of times where several of us have had to call out that we want to physically restrain him from killing someone...
In one large, high-level multiplayer campaign, I played a pixie rogue (basically the coolest thing ever; 60 ft move per round, greater invisibility as a free action *to dispel*, and sneak attacks). When the DM provided an opportunity for one character to turn against the party (a bigass demonic ritual practically giftwrapped with his name on it in a side room off the dungeon corridor)... I pulled a crossbow bolt, used my racial power to turn it into an arrow of forgetfulness, and shot him.
It was overruled by DM fiat (rassum frassum railroading mother fussum), but I still like the idea. We could have got him out of the dungeon and restrained before it wore off enough for him to remember his own name, let alone the location of the ritual circles.
WARNING: As soon as you start doing this, every decision your party makes will play out like a game of American football.